In the heart of Sardinia – a summer paradise

Besides SQL there are vacations… nice time spent with family and friends. I want to blog about one of ours and give you a hint where to go next time you think about traveling. This year, we again visited Sardinia. The third year in Sardinia calls for a post 🙂

OK… so we have a good motivation to go there as my mother/father-in-law moved there some years ago, but… it is really a good destination to peak for a wonderful vacation. We tried them all: as a couple – just us first time, two years after that with some close friends, and two another years after that with some other close friends but with kids attached to us this time 🙂

All of the cases have been just fabulous vacations, with new things to do there and visit. I guess it is known that the sea in Sardinia is very clean having all sorts of colours from blue to turquoise, and has different sort of beaches to peak from: sandy from very smooth to not so smooth (the sand that does not stick to your skin when you are wet), rocky, with mountains behind them, red sand and so on…

Of course it is difficult to cover all of them and still keep the vacation air of relaxation. Even us after 3 vacations spent there, still have other parts of Sardinia to go to. We explored a big part from east side, some of the center side, little of the south and the west only from the car this year traveling from airport to our destination.

All the times we stayed in Orosei – a small village, 90 km from Olbia (the island port). I would not recommend this village for a tourist as it is not so full of attractions being a small village, but for us it was the good destination having the relatives there as well. The first and the second time we came with our car from Romania to Sardinia, early booked tickets to the fairy from Livorno to Olbia (first time) and from (Piombino to Olbia). These are quite expensive. You can book them using www.aferry.com.

The third time we flied to Alghero airport directly from Romania but we had a car borrowed to us. What I really wanted to say is that all the times we had a car at our end. It is very important as the distances are not big but if you really want to see the island a car is what you need. There are comapnies that let you rent cars, even in Orosei there was one 🙂

Enough talking, I will rather start uploading pictures and describe the locations from them.

Orosei (part 1)

A small village with a very nice beach with sand that does not stick to your skin (see down right picture) and you could get to Osala beach (see the middle and up left pictures) quite easy as it is very near. Because there are rocks inside the water, you can see different species of small and medium fish.

Road to Osini

It was one good morning when we agreed to drive two guys to their family in Osini. Google said it was 120 km done in 2 hours. Very nice. Except….
It didn’t consider the excessive steep, narrow curves and the fact that some roads where vanished due to current landslides, and that we had to search for alternative paths to get there, path that didn’t exist on our GPS. It was a adventure… quite dangerous one. We did 4-5 hours towards Osini and 4 hours back to Orosei. Still we don’t regret anything from this exciting journey. From a certain point we just kept climbing and for one hour we didn’t descend at all, so when we saw the mark to “monte Olinie 1372 m” we had a good laugh. We saw road signs that were shot (later we found out it is for fun) Sardinians pigs, cows sitting on probably the highest hill for a cow to be… just wandering there, a crystal water and a rocky-sandy beach, and the most interesting story about a city shattered by flood and another one a little bit higher reconstructed as its clone. You could see them both from the road as magnets fixed to the mountain.

Orosei (part 2)

Second time when we came we tried to explore the very extended beach in front of Stagno Petrosu lake (Pond Petrosu in english) very close to Orosei. We almost stuck in the sand with the car due to the fact that we didn’t estimate the depth of it very good and wanted to get as closer to the beach as possible. Two man saw the deep problem we were in and helped drag the car out of it :))

We wanted to see the sun rise from sea in Orosei, but it came behind a mountain, due to the golf shape but anyway… we had our share of pictures:

Admired the Sardinian flora & fauna:

Did some snorkeling again.

AND… did the most breathtaking boat trip through the Orosei golf to explore cala Luna, cala Mariolu, cala Sisine, grotte del Fico, grotte del Bue Marino and its beach. It is really, without any exaggeration the most beautiful, like a fairy tail experience I have ever had on sea. Just watch:

La Caletta and Biderosa

One local man said we should go to La Caletta and Biderosa beaches. So we did but unfortunately I don’t have pictures from these places. I recommend though much more Biderosa for whole day stay, as there are 5 beaches to peak from, trees to hide from sun, and benches for picnic, and water… need I say more?

In conclusion, wonderful island with wonderful places!
Definitely a good vacation!

About me…

I am from Bucharest, Romania and I am working with SQL Servers since 2006. I have been working closely with all SQL versions starting with SQL Server 2000. I am a senior DBA at OpenSky company and spend my free time with my husband and my son.
See more about me and why I started this blog.